BIOGRAPHYSawa (河内沙和 - Sawa Kouchi) is a Japanese born singer that lives in the suburbs, about one hour from Tokyo. Her mother made the pitch-perfect girl pick up the violin at the tender age of four, and by age 10, she took up the piano out of her own will.

SAWA first appeared in 2003 as a member of the group Jack Knife under Stardust Management. The group performed cover routines live and disbanded in April 2004 without releasing any material. Later, influenced by favorite artists such as m-flo, Jazztronik and FreeTEMPO, she began writing and performing music based on club music. At the same time, she proceeded to college to make her childhood dream come true – to become a teacher. She acquired the license for a high school English teacher, and taught at a local high school, although only for three months.

SAWA seized the chance in 2006, when she participated in a club event in Yokohama that she thought was an audition (which wasn't one). Her transparent yet characteristic, miraculous voice, as well as her fresh and cute presence that has never been seen in other club music singers in the past, she caught the attention of many music creators. During this time SAWA began working with Front Men Entertainment under the name SK-V. Through the partnership this name changed from SK-V to SK5 and finally to KOUCHI. Titles thought to have been recorded under this label are: "Sakamichi", "Merry-Go-Round", "talking", "happiness", and "In The Music".

On May 1st, 2008 she participated as the vocalist in "Discovery", produced by Yukihiro Fukutomi. The song was used as the opening theme song of PSP game Nippon no Asoko de. One month later, on June 18th, she made her indies debut with COLORS, a mini-album produced by Hanzawa Takeshi (FreeTEMPO). It debuted at #8 on the Japanese iTunes Store's albums chart. It has also stayed in the top 3 for three weeks since release in the dance music chart, already showing signs of a major breakout.In the following year, SAWA made her major label debut through Sony Music Entertainment's sub-label, EPIC Records, with the mini-album I Can Fly on July 22nd. Her second mini-album of 2009 titled Swimming Dancing was released on November 25th. I Can Fly had commercial tie-ins to the MBS TV fashion program DRESS as well as a summer commercial for Honda. SAWA's first release of 2010, a mini-album called Ai ni Iku yo was released on April 7th, 2010. This release saw her working with producers Hisashi Nawata, Jazzin'park, Ookubo Jun'ya (ANA) and RAM RIDER.

Her debut full-length album Welcome to Sa-World is set to be released on July 7th, 2010. The album will feature seven songs produced by SAWA herself.

Updated her info and reformatted some of the text above. Also linked her to some more accurate artists now that I have a better sense of what her fans are listening to (before she didn't really have anyone when I made this group years ago o_0)

Regarding Swimming Dancing, for the longest time I thought "Oh, my god. No disco balls!" And then today, after joining this group, I noticed that they actually are there.... on her hat, lulz. I still can't remember seeing any disco balls in the video though.